Prince had the true patriarchal spirit; was born to be a leader of men, if withal, like Bottom, he could say, “My chief humour is for a tyrant.” It was a time when a tyrant or two did not come amiss on the Canadian border, however unworthily at the metropolis th’ oppressor ruled tyrannic when he durst. Prince came not long after the time when the Western District gave sentence for manslaughter, “to be burned in the hand and accordingly put in execution before the court.” If this was justice in times of peace there was not much room for the animadversions with which he was covered--but not overwhelmed--when, the Constitution suspended, revolutionary crimes could scarce be put down save by revolutionary methods. “MacNab and Drew, Arthur, Prince, Hagerman and Robinson, are still alive,” said the press; each one of them agreed with Blackstone that obedience is an empty word if every man may decide how far he shall obey. There is no doubt that the Sandwich-Windsor locality was in ’37-38 a seething caldron of unrest, distrust and dissatisfaction; but above it all rides this overpowering personality: “For the brave Prince still lives, and so do his men, Who triumphed before and can do it again.” “(_Toast_) ‘That brave, intrepid officer whose promptitude of action turned the revelry of Yankee pirates in the western frontier into a _post mortem_ examination. May the sad lesson prove a caution to the followers of Blue Beard.’ (_Tune_--‘The Brave Old English Gentleman’).” “Of politics,” said he himself in one of the hundreds of speeches which did much towards making his fame, “of politics I shall say but little here. Mine have been before you and the people of Upper Canada for the last five sessions. I am in the true sense of the word a Constitutional Reformer.” How far Brougham and others of his old country critics agreed with him shall be seen hereafter. His record in the Canadian House shows that he was never amenable to party discipline himself, was classed as “doubtful” by both parties, had hot fits of Liberalism and Conservatism by turns; like a stiff old Englishman, said he was prepared, as the barons at Runnymede, to maintain his rights at all risks; with John Henry Boulton came out as Independent, was a veritable Thorough in his opposition to the Rebellion Losses Bill, and capped the climax of his many-sided character by printing a petition signed by “many respectable Canadians” to move an address to Her Majesty praying that Canada might be relieved from her “dependent state and allowed to become an independent sovereignty.” By the time the last transpired it behooved Robert Baldwin to stigmatize the petition borne by the hero of ’37 as “_quasi treasonable_.”